Estudios Caóticos

Hey guys! This is all about productive stuff you can do on Sunday to make the most out of it and have an amazing week! 🥑

Implementing some of these things in your Sunday routine, will help you not to spend your Mondays trying to get your life together.

10th feb 2018. morning studies ft. ancient cultures notes & coffee☕️

08.11.2018; planning day, trying to get on the rythm of my new timetables. my mornings are shorter, but it’s so refreshing to be able to do things after work, i can even study!

There are many reasons that I find the work I do with Tibetan varieties spoken in Nepal to be interesting and rewarding. One of those reasons is that I think it’s important that our understanding of language isn’t just limited to understanding particular languages. My work on phonetics with Suzy Styles meant that we showed a failure of a famous psycholinguistic experiment that is usually considered to be very predicable, while my more recently published work on gesture in the same community showed patterns of use that are similar to people from very different places, which suggests something bigger about how human’s draw on gesture when they speak.

At the International Gesture Society conference in the middle of the year Kensy Cooperrider gave a talk that really neatly articulated what’s at stake when we decide whether we want to invest so much of our research energy on a small number of languages like English, or take the chance to include a broader range of languages into the research process. I’m delighted he’s written his line of argumentation up as a blog post.

Kensy argues this all comes down to a wager as to whether we believe in the importance of diversity, and what happens if we’re right or not. The only thing we can do to make the best outcome of the wager is to ensure we including different populations in research. Some of you may recognise this as a riff on Pascal’s Wager, about deciding if it’s worth believing in God.

Kensy sets out his wager:

Now back to our real concern: whether we in the behavioral sciences are better off betting on “much diversity” or on “not much diversity.” As in Pascal’s wager, either bet is fine if it proves correct. And if we wager on “much diversity” and turn out to be wrong, this is not such a bad thing. We could have stayed down the hall, working with the WEIRD model organisms close to hand, but instead we ventured out. We had a few field misadventures to tell our friends about and more than a few enriching life experiences. And, in fact, we contributed to the project of providing evidence for human universality rather than simply taking it on faith. 

But if we wager on “not much diversity” and turn out to be wrong, the outcome is not so benign. We stayed in the lab; we learned some interesting things about WEIRDos, NAUs, and SAE speakers. But we also likely came up with some erroneous explanations for the phenomena we’re interested in. In particular, we may have settled on accounts that downplay the critical role of cultural practices and ecological circumstances in shaping human behavior. What is especially unfortunate about this misplaced bet is that the diversity we didn’t bother to study is vanishing fast. Future generations of researchers may not have the chance to bet again, to replay the tape and take diversity seriously the second time around. The price of wagering on “not much diversity,” in other words, may be eternal ignorance.

While I’m personally grateful services like Tribalingual exist, creating some academic access to Indigenous languages, particularly for Indigenous diaspora (if they can afford it), I’m extremely dubious of the notion that a outsiders learning an Indigenous language is somehow “saving” it. There was a testimonial from some white American girl learning Ainu itak, and she spoke of it as if she were collecting some rare Pokemon card before it went out of print or something, framing it in typical dying Native rhetoric. What is she going to do with Ainu itak, except as some obscure lingual trophy?

If you want to save a language, save the people.

Language means nothing without history and culture breathing life into it, and in turn we are disconnected from our history and ancestors without it. Support Indigenous quality of life, ACCESS to quality education, quality health services (mental and physical), land and subsistence rights, CLEAN DRINKING WATER, advocate against police brutality and state violence, DEMAND ACTION FOR MISSING AND MURDERED INDIGENOUS WOMEN.

Outsiders who record native speakers as disembodied audio spirits frozen in time, or (usually white) linguists who copy down the bones and organs of a language without respecting its body, are guilty of resurrecting something that is not the original language. Language is so much more than files and corpora, and this idea that we who have degrees are the most qualified to “save” a language is colonialist and foolhardy. Every linguist who takes National Geographic money to go to a remote village to analyze an endangered language is just a vulture circling to feed — to truly save a language would be to give the community resources to teach and learn it as they see fit.

But that doesn’t get us published.

Their best might look a little different from your best.

But they’re trying. We’re all trying.

[ 29 . 07 . 2019 ]

Hi! This is another small notebook I made for studying biochemistry at the start of last school year.  I use this notebook to first study my notes and then I write questions about everything that appears on the notes.

My favourite methods for studying subjects like biology or history are spaced repetition and active recall. Here is how to use it:

Write down questions that cover everything you need to learn from your notes (or textbook).

Test yourself on those questions, without looking at your notes. At the end, you can check all your answers, as if you were the professor.

Try to answer the questions you got wrong after a short pause, until you're able to answer every question correctly.

Repeat 3 days later, 1 week later, 2 weeks later, 1 month later. Spacing study sessions like this will make the information stick in your long-term memory, so you don't forget what you learn.

I know it can be hard starting to study for a test a couple months before it. You can surely adapt this method to your schedule and maybe you want to do 3 or 4 repetitions instead of 5. I hope this method helps you boost your performance in exams if you decide to give it a try!

•

Super Croc, gigantic crocodile from Cretaceous period

Paleontologist Paul Serrano and his team were searching near Gadoufaoua, Niger in Africa. During the search, the team came across huge pieces of fossilised bones, and recognised them as the bones from an extinct crocodile species. It was so large that it wound up as the first animal nicknamed a “Supercroc”.

French paleontologists had found similar bones including skull fragments some 30 years before Serrano’s team. They named the creature Sarcosuchus imperator (flesh crocodile emperor), but before the expedition by Serrano’s team in 1997 little was known about this ancient predator.

Go out in the sun (but don’t forget to sunscreen your face) — Feeling the sun hitting your skin not only will make you feel more awake, but it is also essencial for your body to process vitamin D, and as a bonus the sun can make you feel less shitty.

Drink plenty of watter (even if that makes you need to go pee every hour or so) — try to drink watter instead of soda or store bought juice, and I know this one is repetitive but save some money to buy a reusable bottle as it will: 1. Save you a lot of money long term, since you won’t have to buy watter; 2. Uncounsiously make you drink more watter.

Ditch the post-noon caffeine (no matter how tired you are) — I am 99% sure it will help you sleep. Also: save money to buy a kettle and brew your own coffee. It will save you tons of money if your a starbucks fan.

If you drink, drink responsably (and please, take that water bottle, fill it up and drink all of it before you go to sleep. You will thank me in the morning) — if you go out to drink, make sure someone you trust is also going. Never drink alone. No matter how much you want to get wasted try to remember what happened the last time you did it. Eat something before you go out, alcohol kicks in stronger in an empty stomach.

Talk to people (even if it is just you family or roomate) — talking to people about things that aren’t school related will help you stay sane and focused. Try to make new friends and meet new people, it can be fun.

Walk whenever you can (even if you are just walking circles around your bedroom) — Excercise. Dopamine. Feeling less shitty. The sun is shining. Your body will thank you.

Your random grammar lesson for today: 

In Russian, imperfective verbs can be in the past, present, and future tense. 

- Я улыбалась. I smiled./ I were smiling  - Я улыбаюсь. I smile/ I am smiling.  - Я буду улыбаться. I will smile / I will be smiling

Perfective verbs can be only in the past tense or future tense. If a verb is perfective, it can not be in the present tense. 

I’m looking for people to help with art, writing, editing, basic design, etc.

if interested, please fill out the form below.

create a vision board

a vision board is a collage of pictures and quotes of your dreams, goals, and things that make you happy

the purpose of it is to bring everything on it to life

it should focus on how you want to feel

these visualizations serve as a motivation to achieve said dreams and goals

here’s a helpful wikihow article on how to make one: x

set up a reward system

this one is pretty self-explanatory

remember to reward yourself for reaching small goals, as well

aced your last test? great, it’s time to celebrate!

finished your homework? go eat that chocolate in the fridge!

most often, we don’t see the results of our hard work as soon as we’d like, so you just have to give them to yourself

surround yourself with positivity

may it be inspiring tumblr posts or a supportive group of friends, it’s so important to be around people who are rooting for you!

try to distance yourself from people who want to see you fail, or who don’t believe in you

if that’s not possible, try to see them as an extra motivator: do the thing they think you’re not capable of! prove them wrong!

start small

break big goals down to smaller ones that are doable

so instead of a 4.0 GPA, start with „studying every day for the next 7 days“

if you have a list of tasks, start with the smallest one

the little confidence boost you get after finishing one of your tasks is extremely helpful

it gets the ball rolling and suggests that you can actually tackle your to-do list

find like-minded people

the studyblr community is perfect for this

it’s full of supportive, ambitious and positive people who are always ready to help

share your achievements and failures with them

having a great support group to lean on in times of stress is super important

keep track of your progress

whether through the usage of a bullet journal or a blog, it’s helpful to have the ability to actually see what and how you’re doing

also, bullet journals are extremely fun to make and help you be organized in general

bullet journal tutorials: x x x 

don’t compare yourself to others

one of the biggest motivation killers is comparison

i know it’s hard to stay motivated when you feel like everyone around you is doing better than you

still, it’s crucial to try and compare yourself only to your past self

try to improve a little, to put a little more effort into something

there will always be someone who has achieved more, it will only put you down

1. Become aware of how and when you tearing yourself down.

2. Now that you can catch yourself doing it. Offer counters to the negative self talk. A really useful thing I read was to talk to yourself almost the way you would child. Gentle and patient. Even when they fuck up.

3. Take time to celebrate your small accomplishments. You’ve been attacking yourself for every little mistake. Apply that same fervor to the positive things in your life. Did the dishes even though you didn’t want to? Fuck yeah! Got up and took shower? YES!!! You are taking positive steps to feeling better. Celebrate it.

4. Make lists of things you’re good at/ like about yourself. The first time I did this the only two things in my list we’re that I liked my hair and I had good friends. It was start.

5. Don’t beat yourself up if you screw up steps 1-4. It’s counter productive. When I catch myself calling my self stupid for some mistake or other my response now is,“We don’t talk to ourselves like that anymore. What’s something constructive that could actually help solve the problem.”

Most of the time that seems to work. Not always. But more and more Everytime.